Friday, November 26, 2010

Opening November 26 and on view until December 24, Susan Jane Belton: Coffee To Go. Opening Reception next Friday, December 3rd from 6 - 8pm.

Bringing in the holiday season, Howard Yezerski Gallery presents Coffee To Go, a show of new paintings by Susan Jane Belton. Belton continues to work on her signature series of logo-emblazoned take out coffee cups. Putting a contemporary spin on the traditional still life, Belton's coffee cups comment on the ritual of drinking coffee, and the corporatism and consumerism connected with that ritual.

Painting the cups on various backgrounds and from different perspectives, Belton's coffee cups come alive, each cup communicating its own character and personality to the viewer. By displaying the cups in a grid, we are able to see the interactions between their individual traits, and investigate the role of advertising and branding in our everyday lives. By using an object as universal and accessible as the coffee cup, Belton is able to convey a unique perspective on contemporary society.

Susan Jane Belton has a studio in Boston's South End and teaches at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts. Her work has been shown throughout New England, New York, and California and is in the collections of institutions like the DeCordova Museum, the Boston Public Library and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Tuesday, November 16, 2010

This week's blog entry is devoted to sharing news about what's currently going on with Howard Yezerski Gallery artists. Currently on view at the Gallery is a show of 24 photographs by important British photographer, Chris Killip. We are also looking forward to opening a "back-room" show of Susan Jane Belton's coffee cup paintings: Coffee To Go. The show will go up on November 26th, and the opening will be Friday December 3rd from 6 - 8pm.

Tonight, Tuesday November 16th at 7pm, sculptor Rona Pondick will be giving a lecture at the School of Visual Arts at 209 East 23rd Street in the 3rd floor amphitheater in New York. Pondick's work was last seen at Howard Yezerski Gallery in September of 2009. Read a review of the show here.
Dawoud Bey's show of his "Harlem, USA" series at the Studio Museum in Harlem opened last Thursday, November 11th and will be on view until January 2, 2011. Bey's work has is also currently on view at the Harn Museum in Gainesville, FL. Both "Class Pictures" and "First Year Florida" Project are on view. This upcoming Sunday, November 14th at 3pm Dawoud Bey will be giving a lecture at the Harn about the exhibition and the residency that he completed at the University of Florida.

The annual photography fair "Paris Photo" is taking place this week, from Thursday the 18th through Sunday the 21st. In conjunction with that important fair, photographer Gary Schneider is in Paris for several events. On November 18th he will be holding a book signing of HandBook at 3pm at the Aperture Foundation Booth #A36. From the 18th to the 20th at Gallerie Francoise Paviot (57 Rude Sainte-Anne) Schneider will be making handprint portraits, by appointment, in conjunction with the show of his work currently on view there.

Work by Elaine Spatz-Rabinowitz is included in the current exhibit Place as Idea at the Worcester Museum of Art. Place as Idea explores the idea of place as a "vehicle for visualizing time, displacement, memory, and fantasy in works by an international roster of contemporary artists." The exhibition is on view until February 13, 2011.

The photo series Les Femmes du Maroc by Lalla Essaydi is on view at the Bates College Museum of Art in Lewiston, ME until December 18. These timely and beautiful pieces are worth the trip up north.

Catherine Kehoe was interviewed last week by The Jerusalem Studio School. The lengthy and informative interview can be found here.

Susan Jane Belton's work was featured in the December issue of American Art Collector. Click here to read the interview (p.46) with Seth Berkowitz, a collector of Belton's work.

Saturday, November 6, 2010

Howard Yezerski Gallery proudly presents the work of Chris Killip, one of the most influential photographers to have come from Great Britain. 4 & 20 Photographs will be Killip’s first one-man exhibition in the USA.

Click here to read the fantastic review of this show from November 30th's Boston Globe by Mark Feeny.

Killip’s work is widely praised as the most acute depiction of the human cost to Britain’s process of de-industrialization. The twenty-four images in this exhibition, from 1974-88, are primarily from the North of England and cover the tenure of four very different Prime Ministers: Harold Wilson, Edward Heath, Jim Callaghan and Margaret Thatcher.

“The term ‘poetic document’ to describe Killip’s work has perhaps never been more apt, for as Ian Jeffry has written, Killip would seem to be no programmed sociologist, nor even much of a social observer. ‘He is, rather, suggests Jeffry, a storyteller, concerned primarily with the fabric of things, of life lodged in matter. However his sense of one is completed only by a sense of the other. “ (Gerry Badger, The Photobook, Vol 2)

Chris Killip was born in 1946 on the Isle of Man. He is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Henri Cartier Bresson Award, and his work is featured in the collections of major institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art and the Victoria and Albert Museum. The author of five books, including the highly acclaimed In Flagrante, 1988,which was reproduced by Errata Editions in their series on the photo-book in 2009. He is a Professor of Visual and Environmental Studies at Harvard University where he has taught since 1991.

In 2012 Killip will have a retrospective exhibition of his work curated by Ute Eskildsen at the Folkwang Museum in Essen. Many of the images that will be included in the retrospective, as well as in this exhibition, have never been exhibited or published before.

The blog Prospero, on the website for the Economist magazine, had a review of Killip's work on November 10th. The entry stresses the iconic scenes portrayed in his photographs of industrial Britain in the 1970s and 1980s. Click here to read the review.

Father and son watching a parade,
West-end of Newcastle, Tyneside, 1980

4 & 20 Photographs was previously showing at Amador Gallery in New York before coming to Howard Yezerski Gallery next week. Killip was mentioned in The New Yorker Magazine Gallery Notes in their October 18, 2010 Issue:

"It's hard to believe that this great British photographer is only now having his first solo exhibition in the U.S. Like Bill Brandt and Martin Parr, Killip casts a sharp, unsentimental eye on his fellow-citizens and their environment. The photographs here, made mostly in England's bleak northern cities between 1974 and 1988, when more and more people were out of work, are among his toughest and most affecting. Never operatic, Killip is a master of ordinary despair: amid a flurry of windblown trash, a man in an overcoat stands facing a brick wall chalked with a tiny bit of graffiti proclaiming "true love."

About the Gallery

Howard Yezerski Gallery is a leading contemporary art gallery in Boston specializing in painting, photography and sculpture. We represent emerging and established artists that are both local and international. Howard Yezerski Gallery has been a vital member of the Boston art community since the 1980s.
www.howardyezerskigallery.com